On St Michael’s Mount and the Phenicians. Py 
and they are seen as peninsulas.” . This explanation of 
what his tountrymen would have regarded: as a most im- 
probable phenomenon, 1s literally true ; for he does not say, 
as the reviewer imagines, that. all the islands between 
Europe and Britain came within this description—nor 
indeed that any of them did, which were in deep water like 
the Isle of Wight; but he speaks only of those which, like 
the Mount, were in shallow water and on the coast. 
~ The only reason given by the reviewer for considering 
- the Isle of Wight to be the ancient Iktin, is its being nearer 
than the Mount to Gaul, and because Windesue Says stat at 
_ Iktin “ the traders piiehabe the tin of the natives, and 
transport it into Gaul; and, finally, travelling through Gaul 
on foot, in about thirty days they bring their burdens on 
horses to the mouth of the river Rhone.” This passage, 
particularly the word jinally, which I have written in italics, 
leads me to conclude that the tin was carried most of the 
way from Iktin to the mouth of the Rhone by sea, and 
therefore probably to the inmost part of the Bay of Biscay, 
_and from thence by land to Marseilles, at the mouth of the 
Rhone, to avoid sailing round the Spanish peninsula, as 
was the more ancient route while Tyre and Tarshish were 
flourishing. And it is remarkable that the sandy parish of 
Lelant in the Bay of St Ives, only four miles from the Mount, 
is called by the same name as Les Landes, the sandy coast of 
the Bay of Biscay (¢ and d being interchangeable letters), 
as if the one name had been derived from the other through 
the tin-traders, whomust have been well acquainted with both 
places. Moreover, the carriage by land from the north of 
France to the Mediterranean, as the reviewer reads Diodorus, 
would, in those rude ages, have been not. only more expen- 
sive, but more unsafe than by the route I have mentioned. 
As it is now established beyond all reasonable question, 
that the Phcenicians came to Mountsbay for tin, both be- 
fore and for many centuries after the time of Moses, and 
that the Mount under the name of Iktin, is the most ancient 
British port known to history; it will be interesting, in 
conclusion, to consider the derivation of this name, and of 
the name of the island in which we live. 
Ik is the Cornish for “ port ;” tin is the metal so called 
